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PUC

Why has CA Attorney General Kamala Harris issued search warrants for the offices of utilities and their regulators in a PUC corruption scandal and then not followed through? Could it be because she doesn't want to hurt powerful Democratic friends? That is what a KPBS investigative reporter is exploring.

When PUC commissioner Michael Picker, a former senior aide to Governor Jerry Brown, was appointed PUC president by Brown, he claimed that he would make the agency “fair, open, accessible and effective” in the wake of scandal-tainted Michael Peevey’s retirement.

Today So Cal Gas, and other proponents of the aging natural gas storage infrastructure, face off against Senator Pavley’s proposed moratorium on natural gas drilling at a very- late-in-the-day hearing in the Assembly Utilities Committee ( 3 PM start for SB 380 and other bills). It’s hardly a made-for-media moment, scheduled post-newspaper print deadline. And Pavley’s enemies have not shown their true faces, but their powerful grip has been felt.

The president of the California Public Utilities Commission secretly meets in a Warsaw hotel room with a Southern California Edison executive and eventually ratepayers wind up paying 70 percent of the $4.7 billion tab to shutter the defective San Onofre nuclear power plant. Does that president sound like Michael Peevey, now under criminal investigation for alleged ex-parte communications, obstruction of justice, and other transgressions?

The largest methane gas leak in California history began more than three months ago and has driven residents with nosebleeds, vomiting, rashes, and dizziness out of 5,000 homes. Shouldn't we know why, how and who caused the mess by now?